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Amie Chen
Amie Chen

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[Part 1] Setup a working Vuepress blog with Tailwind.css

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In this part, we will setup a working Vuepress blog with Tailwind.css.

1. GettingΒ Started

Let's create a folder called vuepress-blog then run these commands.

# cd into the folder
cd vuepress-blog

# install the latest vuepress alpha globally on your computer
npm install -g vuepress@next

# create the first markdown file
echo '# Hello VuePress' > README.md

# start the site locally
vuepress dev
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When you run vuepress build, the README.md at the root level will be generated into index.html. Now head to localhost:8080, you should see a default site like this. Horay!!
screenshot for default site

Notice that some css already been applied to the page without any work (What's this magic ?! 😱). It's coming straight from the default theme packed in Vuepress. To alter it, run vuepress eject and a generated .vuepress folder will show up in your directory tree. It contains all the code for the default theme. We will go over this later when we start making a custom theme.

2. The correct directory structure

On the documentation, Vuepress recommends putting everything under a docs folder. You can name it with anything, but the important thing is that when running Vuepress commands, you'd need to run vuepress dev [folder name, i.e. docs] or you will see a 404 page.

On the other hand, you could simply leave everything at the root level under vuepress-blog. In this case, you just have to run vuepress dev like before.

3. Add tailwind.css

Since we don't have package.json yet, let's npm init the project first.

npm init
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Then install tailwind

npm install tailwindcss
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Now we are ready to generate the tailwind config

npx tailwind init tailwind.config.js
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By now, your directory structure should look like this

vuepress-blog
β”œβ”€β”€ node_modules
β”œβ”€β”€ README.md
β”œβ”€β”€ package-lock.json
β”œβ”€β”€ package.json
└── tailwind.config.js
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Next, we are going to create a custom theme that utilize tailwind.

4. Create a Custom Vuepress theme

At the root level of your project, create a .vuepress folder with a theme folder inside. Then inside of theme, create a styles folder. .vuepress houses everything, including your current theme and the vuepress config; the theme and styles folder is to override the default theme.

mkdir -p .vuepress/theme/styles
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Now add a theme.styl in the styles folder to serve as the entry point of all css. Your directory tree should look like this:

vuepress-blog
β”œβ”€β”€ .vuepress
β”‚   └── theme
β”‚       └── styles
β”‚           └── theme.styl
β”œβ”€β”€ node_modules
β”œβ”€β”€ README.md
β”œβ”€β”€ package-lock.json
β”œβ”€β”€ package.json
└── tailwind.config.js
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Add these lines to theme.styl to load all of our tailwind's styles.

@tailwind preflight;
@tailwind components;
@tailwind utilities;
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Nice -- We are almost done!
Now we are going to tell Vuepress to connect to our tailwind. Create a file called config.js in .vuepress and put in these settings

module.exports = {
  title: "Vuepress Blog Example",
  description: "just another blog",
  postcss: {
    plugins: [
      require("tailwindcss")("./tailwind.config.js"),
      require("autoprefixer"),
    ],
  },
}
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Lastly, we are going to add our theme index file. Create another folder named layouts in theme with a Layout.vue inside.

In Layout.vue let's add the very basic template for now

<template>
  <div>
    <h1 class="font-sans text-teal">hello world</h1>
  </div>
</template>
<style lang="stylus">
@import '../styles/theme.styl';
</style>
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This Layout.vue will serve as the base layout of all your pages. If there is no layout specified in the frontmatter of a page, Vuepress will default to this layouts/Layout.vue. It's a required file for any vuepress theme.

Note: If your theme is super simple and doesn't have a layouts folder, you can leave the Layout.vue file directely under the theme.

Your final directory structure should look like this

vuepress-blog
β”œβ”€β”€ .vuepress
β”‚   β”œβ”€β”€ theme
β”‚   β”‚   └── layouts
β”‚   β”‚       └── Layout.vue
β”‚   β”‚   └── styles
β”‚   β”‚       └── theme.styl
β”‚   └── config.js
β”œβ”€β”€ node_modules
β”œβ”€β”€ README.md
β”œβ”€β”€ package-lock.json
β”œβ”€β”€ package.json
└── tailwind.config.js
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Restart your server now and run vuepress dev, you should see a page like this:
screenshot for hello world

Make sure the tailwind classes are working (i.e. you should see the text being green instead of black.)

Nice job! By now, we have created a custom Vuepress theme that utilizes tailwind.css. In the next part, we are going to learn how to write your own theme and make your blog look awesome! Part 2 is here.


This is a cross-post from my website. Check out the original and more there!

Top comments (1)

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anekenonso profile image
kenneth okenwa

well am getting a black letter with a # before the text